27 comments:

Wow! You're so massively wrong about these. I am surprised because you are generally so on-target, even when I disagree with you I find myself questioning my own assumptions to check whether I've made a mistake.

Pleasure is the enjoyment of transient things, not attachment to them. When you become attached, you stop enjoying them. Cf. the person who enjoys a glass of wine and then moves on, vs. the alcoholic who frantically scrabbles through the cabinets looking for juice.

Kind words are worth nothing? On the contrary, kind words are the emoluments of social life. When knowably sincere, they buttress our self-image and give us a positive context in which to operate. When merely polite, they give us the data point that the person giving them at least considers our feelings worthy of a gentle fib.

I don't take pleasure from the attachment in my love bond; the pleasure comes from the companionship, the support, the hot sex, and all the rest. All of which, however lifelong and unbreakable they may be, are fleeting and impermanent - one out-of-control city bus away from oblivion.

Coincidence. As these comments were being posted I typed a message to a friend about the difficulty I have reconciling the second and third noble truths of Buddhism [the origin of suffering is attachment; the cessation of love is attainable] with romantic love, marriage and family.

Robert, is it possible to enjoy spending your life with someone without forming the kind of attachment that can create suffering? The Jesuit Anthony de Mello suggested that such is attainable, but it's hard for me to imagine. I take it that you acknowledge your attachment, but realize that's not what makes you happy? Would you lose your attachment if you could?

What ever happened to fortune cookies that give you an actual fortune? Today's cookies only make silly declarative statements. I don't want to be told that "Kind words cost nothing." I want a bona fide fortune that will tell me what's going to happen a week from Thursday ("You will receive a check for $125,644.60 on the 15th.") Is this asking too much.

Did I ever make that assertion? The first line made me say the next line, but you are left to infer the connection. It could be something like "what the cookie really thinks" (but is putting a false front on) or "what it suggests is also true" or "what a cynic would say in response" or "what Althouse thinks is more accurate" or "how a person could misread the cookie."

Ziemer: Think deeply about what "Althouse response" might mean! What is a response, but a reply, the thing said next, prompted by the stimulus, in this case, a fortune cookie? Why a person like Althouse might reply with a complete nonsequitur!

This is interesting timing, as I was eating at a new Asian place in my neighborhood (and posting a review thereof) not too long after you wrote the fortune cookie post. I'm happy to say that the two cookies I got both had actual fortunes:

Cookie #1: "Good news of a long-awaited event will soon arrive"

Cookie #2: "Romance comes into your life in a very unusual sort of way."

Kev response: "I sure hope so, on both counts."

(However, my response was done silently, since it was a very crowded restaurant and I didn't want to be perceived as a wacko. I assume Ann carried on her conversation the same way if it took place in public.)

Oh, and I liked downtownlad's take on the whole thing. It reminded me of that comedy routine where every sentence had "in my pants" appended to it.